A private telegram from St. Petersburg to the
Frankfurter Zeitung[2] of April 1 (14) states:
“Since the end of March secret negotiations have been going on between
the Octobrists,[3] the moderate Rights, the Cadets and the Party of
Peaceful Renovation[4] about whether they can form a bloc. The
plan was initiated by the Octobrists, who can no longer count on the
support of the extreme Right. The latter, particularly dissatisfied with
the Octobrists on account of their interpellation regarding Dumbadze,
intend to vote with the opposition against the Centre. Such a manoeuvre
would render difficult the work of the Duma, since a’ combination of the
extreme Right and the opposition would command 217 votes against the 223 of
the Centre and moderate Rights. The first talk (about a bloc) took place on
April 12 (March 30, 0. S.), and was attended by 30 representatives,
chosen on a proportional basis. The talks led to no result, and it was
decided to hold a new consultation during the coming week."

How reliable this information may be, we do not know. In any case the
silence of the Russian newspapers does not prove that it is wrong, and we
think it necessary to inform our readers about this report in the foreign
press.

In principle there is nothing incredible in the fact that secret
negotiations are going on. By all their political history, beginning with
Struve’s visit to Witte in November 1905, continuing with the
backstairs talks with Trepov and Co. in the
summer of 1906,[5] and so forth and so on, the Cadets have
proved that the essence of their tactics
is to slip in at the backdoor for talks with those in power. But even if
this report about negotiations proved to be untrue, it remains beyond doubt
that in practice in the Third Duma there exists a tacit
bloc of the Cadets and the Octobrists on the basis of the former taking a
turn to the right. A number of Cadet votes in the Third Duma have proved
this irrefutably, quite apart from the Cadet speeches and the character of
their political activities.

In the Third Duma, we said even before it had been convened, there are
two majorities (see Proletary and the resolution of the
All-Russian Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. in
November 1907).[1]
And we were already demonstrating then that to evade recognition of this
fact, as the Mensheviks were doing, and above all to evade a class
description of the Cadet-Octobrist majority, means to let oneself
be dragged at the tail of bourgeois liberalism.

The class nature of the Cadets is showing itself more and more
clearly. Those who would not see this in 1906 are being obliged by facts to
recognise it today, or else sink completely into opportunism.

Notes

[2]Frankfurter Zeitung—a German bourgeois newspaper, published
in Frankfort-on-Main from 1856.

[3]Octobrists—members of the League of October Seventeenth, a
party formed in Russia after the promulgation of the tsar’s manifesto
of October 17, 1905. It was a counter-revolutionary party representing the
interests of the big bourgeoisie and landlords who engaged in capitalist
farming. Its leaders were the well-known industrialist and Moscow house
owner A. I. Guchkov and the big landowner M. V. Rodzyanko. The Octobrists
unreservedly supported the tsarist government’s home and foreign
policies.

[4]The Party of Peaceful Renovation—a bourgeois-landlord
counter revolutionary organisation. Founded in 1906 by amalgamation of the
Left Octobrists with the Right Cadets. Lenin called the Party of Peaceful
Renovation “the Party of Peaceful Plunder”.

[5]This refers to the talks between the Cadets and Trepov, Deputy Minister
of the Interior, concerning the possibility of setting up a Cadet Ministry.